Taylor Swift held a concert at California’s Rose Bowl this past May that was monitored by a facial recognition system. The system’s target ? Hundreds of Swift’s stalkers. Swift’s facial recognition system was built into a kiosk that displayed highlights of her rehearsals, which would secretly record onlookers’ faces. According to Rolling Stone, which spoke with a concert security expert who observed the kiosk, attendees who looked at the kiosk were immediately scanned. Afterward, the data was (...)

Let’s begin with better regulation, protecting workers, and applying “truth in advertising” rules to AI Today the AI Now Institute publishes our third annual report on the state of AI in 2018, including 10 recommendations for governments, researchers, and industry practitioners. It has been a dramatic year in AI. From Facebook potentially inciting ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, to Cambridge Analytica seeking to manipulate elections, to Google building a secret censored search engine for the (...)

Facial recognition has quickly shifted from techno-novelty to fact of life for many, with millions around the world at least willing to put up with their faces scanned by software at the airport, their iPhones, or Facebook’s server farms. But researchers at New York University’s AI Now Institute have issued a strong warning against not only ubiquitous facial recognition, but its more sinister cousin : so-called affect recognition, technology that claims it can find hidden meaning in the shape (...)

The US Secret Service has revealed plans for a test of facial recognition surveillance around the White House, with the goal of identifying “subjects of interest” who might pose a threat to the president. The document was published in late November, but the American Civil Liberties Union publicized its existence today. It describes a test that would compare closed circuit video footage of public White House spaces against a database of images — in this case, featuring employees who volunteered (...)

Delta will soon use facial recognition for international flights at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport later this year. Biometric face scanning will be optional, meant as an option to save travelers time from checking in, as spotted by TechCrunch. Those who don’t want their faces scanned could always opt out, but the option is only given to US citizens. Visitors will need to be scanned as a security measure. The data will be collected and stored for two weeks, although (...)

System dubbed ‘the capability’ processes Australians’ information whether they are crime suspects or not Civil rights groups have warned a vast, powerful system allowing the near real-time matching of citizens’ facial images risks a “profound chilling effect” on protest and dissent. The technology – known in shorthand as “the capability” – collects and pools facial imagery from various state and federal government sources, including driver’s licences, passports and visas. The biometric information (...)

China has consistently been ranked by digital advocates as the world’s worst abuser of internet freedom. The country, however, isn’t just tightening online controls at home but is becoming more brazen in exporting some of those techniques abroad including in Africa, says a new report from the US-based think tank Freedom House. Using a mix of official training, providing technological infrastructure to authoritarian regimes, and insisting that international companies accept its content (...)

For the first time, police have compelled a suspect to unlock his phone using Face ID. The case reveals an interesting inversion : More advanced password technology is less protected from police seizure. In August, the 28-year-old Grant Michalski was implicated as part of a ring of men sharing images and videos of a young girl, the daughter of one of the ring’s members, being sexually abused. The FBI arrived at Michalski’s home with the authority to require him to unlock his iPhone X using (...)

It finally happened. The feds forced an Apple iPhone X owner to unlock their device with their face. A child abuse investigation unearthed by Forbes includes the first known case in which law enforcement used Apple Face ID facial recognition technology to open a suspect’s iPhone. That’s by any police agency anywhere in the world, not just in America. It happened on August 10, when the FBI searched the house of 28-year-old Grant Michalski, a Columbus, Ohio, resident who would later that (...)

Omnipresent facial recognition has become a golden goose for law enforcement agencies around the world. In the United States, few are as eager as the Department of Homeland Security. American airports are currently being used as laboratories for a new tool that would automatically scan your face — and confirm your identity with U.S. Customs and Border Protection — as you prepare to board a flight, despite the near-unanimous objections from privacy advocates and civil libertarians, who call (...)

From an e-commerce platform to cloud computing services to fresh food delivery, Amazon’s business activity is developing at a pace so fast it’s almost hard to keep up with. At the end of August 2018, its market cap hit $1 trillion, with shares worth more than 2000 dollars. But Amazon is also under harsh criticism from former and current employees. Numerous controversies have surfaced that tarnish not only Bezos’ leadership, but the general self-entitlement of tech mega companies. For all of (...)

Amazon.com Inc. is considering a plan to open as many as 3,000 new AmazonGo cashierless stores in the next few years, according to people familiar with matter, an aggressive and costly expansion that would threaten convenience chains like 7-Eleven Inc., quick-service sandwich shops like Subway and Panera Bread, and mom-and-pop pizzerias and taco trucks. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos sees eliminating meal-time logjams in busy cities as the best way for Amazon to reinvent the (...)